Life Changer
by Trollmela
Summary: "Smoking, prescription medication, coke, meth, you name it, we do it. I'm not even counting weed and hash here." - "We," Steve stated what should have been a question. - "For me, it was coke." Tony's eyes were focused on his bourbon like it held the truth about life, love and happiness in it. - An incident at a business friend's event is a sudden reminder of how much he's changed.


Tony didn't have many old business friends left. 'Business' and 'friend' didn't always go together, but few people admitted it. Once you'd met a person more than three times at a gathering, you were friends; if you did business with them once, you were 'business friends'.

Dave Cole wasn't quite in that category. Tony had known him for ages, which is where the 'old' came in. Dave had been studying at Harvard while Tony was at MIT; he also owned a semiconductor manufacturing firm, and they had met a few times in Boston at various parties. They still did business occasionally, because while Tony could make (better) semiconductors, Stark Industries didn't actually focus on that type of work.

"Tony! Long time no see!" Dave greeted him.

Tony smirked. "Only three years, not that long in my book." It wasn't that he didn't like Dave exactly; he simply didn't have a lot of patience for him. "We'll talk later about those new chips, right?" Tony asked.

"Sure, sure," Dave said, not looking like it at all. Tony knew that it would be better to talk to one of Dave's business partners who was more into the 'technical' side of production. Tony supposed that was the reason why Dave had studied at Harvard and not at MIT.

"Enjoy yourself, you might find some familiar faces!" Dave added, already on his way to the next guest. His wife, Tony noted, wasn't there, but there wasn't a shortage of other pretty ladies. He could see a few people he knew, and those he didn't know would be familiar to him soon enough.

"JARVIS," he murmured behind a glass of champagne he mostly wasn't drinking. "Can you hear me?"

" _Perfectly, Sir."_

"Good. Let's start our test run then." He found an easy target, a brunette whose face he vaguely recalled but he was pretty sure he hadn't met personally; a model perhaps?

"Who is she?"

After a moment, JARVIS replied: _"Karen Swan, a model last pictured in the February edition of Vogue."_

Helpfully, the AI put up the photo in question on the display of his glasses. It had taken some time to get used to how much closer the image was compared to the suit's HUD. Now it didn't take him aback anymore. His vision was slightly limited, but that didn't matter so much in a civilian setting.

"Leave it up for a moment, Jarv," he instructed and lifted the glasses off the bridge of his nose, turned them casually this way and that; the lenses remained red and inconspicuous. He put the glasses back on.

"Seems to work perfectly, JARVIS. Let's try a few other people."

Putting cameras in glasses was an old spy trick. Tony's advantage was having the power of an AI behind that camera and one, if not _the_ most advanced facial recognition system with unlimited access to all kinds of databases, most of which he shouldn't be able to access. Naturally. And, of course, the ability to have the information immediately displayed on the inside of the glasses without anyone looking at him knowing. The earpiece through which he was connected to Jarvis, and the microphone disguised as a tie clip, were both at least a hundred times more invisible than whatever the CIA used (don't get him started on the Secret Service, which seemed to see them as fashion accessories.)

Tony hadn't found a real use for the glasses yet. He could make some for Natasha and Clint for one of their SHIELD missions, or he could just keep them for himself to weed out the untrustworthy people around him who seemed to constantly pop up.

"Do a scan of everyone, let me know of any anomalies," Tony instructed shortly before an older woman approached him.

She was a reporter of the Washington Post writing about regional events, and they talked about nothing. Pepper should be proud of him; he _could_ talk to female journalists – or any other journalists – without offending them.

" _If you could turn about twenty degrees to the right, Sir, I may have an interesting partial match."_

Tony turned his head as JARVIS had told him. The outline on the screen doubling as sunglass lenses told him who his target was, an unfamiliar man a few years younger than Tony.

"Do you know that guy over there?" Tony asked Diana the journalist.

"Not really."

"Huh, I thought he looked familiar."

" _Hopefully not, Sir_ ," JARVIS picked up. " _That is Michael Simpson, suspected drug dealer with one of the largest networks on the East Coast_." Tony had to fight to keep his expression neutral.

"Oh Eve, I hadn't seen you in forever!" Diana exclaimed just then, almost making Tony jump.

"Diana, so good to see you again!"

Tony smiled at the new arrival charmingly. Perfect timing to get away.

"Don't mind me while I head to the bar."

They might or might not regret that he wasn't planning on coming back.

Tony took the long route, one that allowed him to take a closer look at Simpson on the way. There was only one problem: Tony didn't do inconspicuous. He literally couldn't, because he wasn't Natasha, and because the whole world knew his face and always wanted to talk to him. Tony had hated and loved it at various stages of his life. Today, it was rather inconvenient. Then he spied a security camera. Bingo.

"JARVIS, hack into the system and keep track of him. Let me know when he's up to anything."

" _Of course, Sir."_

He spent the next thirty minutes at the bar, drinking a cocktail more to his liking than Champagne and listened to people talk about this charity, that product, and whatever else came into their minds as soon as they saw him. He signed a few things, something that hadn't happened to him very often at business get-togethers like this one before Iron Man.

There was a lull in his audience when JARVIS said:

" _Sir, you may want to note Mr. Simpson speaking to Mr. Cole."_

Tony did want to take note of that. Dave seemed perfectly fine and happy speaking to a drug dealer, and then they left the room together.

"Any cameras where they're going?"

" _No, Sir, unfortunately not."_

Tony had a suspicion that he didn't need to know what was going on behind that door. He waited until Dave returned, then pulled him aside.

"You invited a drug dealer," he stated.

Dave only chuckled. "You back among the snow birds? I'm sure he'll give you a good price."

Tony froze, but only for an instant. "Wow, are you stupid? Or just dense? I'm really wondering here-"

"Tony, you know how it is – party favors are standard, and someone needs to deliver them. He wanted to see the customers, introduce himself, so I invited him." Dave smiled at him, and Tony wanted to punch his face. "You used to enjoy it yourself."

"That was a long time ago."

"Not all of us can be superheroes," Dave replied.

"It's got nothing to do with that." Tony shook his head and turned away.

Dave shrugged, and Tony was abruptly reminded that Dave had always been an uncaring bastard. The difference was, maybe, that back in the day, Tony had been an uncaring bastard himself. At what point exactly had that changed?

* * *

Tony was tempted to hit up a bar or a club. Instead, he took a cab home to the tower. He had his own bar right there, and he made use of it. The bourbon spilled onto the counter, and Tony wiped it off with his sleeve in irritation. The first mouthful burned, solid and deep and full of comfort. Then he stopped, set the tumbler down and stared at it.

It was just past 1 AM, not late at all by his standards. The common area was dark, lights at 30% because Tony wasn't in the mood for anything brighter. The skyscrapers around the tower provided enough additional light.

Eventually, footsteps drew him out of his silent contemplations. They were heavier than a woman's, the shoes were clearly boots, the strides long – Tony wasn't surprised when Steve came into the room and immediately spotted him at the bar.

"Back already?" He asked before moving on to the fridge. He got himself a _fucking glass of milk_.

"Yeah," Tony only replied with lackluster. If he had looked up, he would have seen Steve's eyebrows move into a beginning frown.

"Something happen?" Steve straddled the bar stool next to Tony's.

Tony shook his head. "Nothing I shouldn't have expected."

"You were out at a friend's business shindig, no?"

Tony pushed his sunglasses over. "I made superspy glasses."

If Steve wondered at the apparent topic change, he didn't show it. He carefully picked them up to inspect them, then put them on. "What do they do?"

The red tinted glasses didn't suit Steve, and it sure changed his looks.

"There's a camera built in which scans people around you; JARVIS then researches them and shows you who they are. Jarv, demo."

Steve jerked back, taken aback by the script suddenly appearing over Tony's head so close to his eyes. "Woah!" He pulled them off. "That's close."

Tony nodded. "You get used to it."

Steve pushed the glasses back his way. He didn't ask, and Tony didn't say anything more, filling the silence with idle taps of his fingernails against his tumbler.

"You know all about the bad habits of rich people?" Tony asked after a while.

"Not that much."

"They're surprisingly similar in some ways to poor people. Alcohol-" Tony lifted his glass in demonstration, "and drugs."

"Like what, smoking?"

"Smoking, prescription medication, coke, meth, you name it, we do it. I'm not even counting weed and hash here."

"We," Steve stated what should have been a question.

"For me, it was coke." Tony's eyes were focused on his bourbon like it held the truth about life, love and happiness in it. He raised the glass off the table and let it thump back down. "At least I ditched that one."

"Did you see someone use at the party?" Steve asked calmly after a second as if his team mate and friend hadn't just told him that he used to be a drug addict.

"Not use. Sell. I didn't see it exactly. JARVIS identified a dealer for me; a big one; has a hand in the trade of the East Coast, apparently. And Dave, my _business friend_ , thinks it's perfectly fine to invite a drug kingpin and offer his backroom for sales." He looked up, finally. Steve thought that Tony showed a lot in his eyes, if one bothered to look. Maybe that was why he wore sunglasses so often, even indoors. "You know, this wouldn't have bothered me five years ago, even after I'd stopped using. It was my type of normal."

"You've changed a lot," Steve remarked. "Apparently Dave hasn't. Worse for him and his friends."

Tony shrugged.

"Yeah, maybe."

Steve shook his head. "No maybe about it. I get that you weren't an angel; heck, I wouldn't call you one now. None of us are. We are what we are because of what we've done and gone through. We're human."

"And Dave isn't?"

"That's not what I'm trying to say." Steve hesitated. He wasn't great with words, it just wasn't his thing. He could draw, he could fight, but don't ask him to do poetry. He could motivate his men and give a speech here and there. Selling war bonds had been mostly rehearsed. "I guess what I'm trying to say is: I'm glad to know you now. You're a good person. You proved that you were stronger than the drug. That takes a lot, I know that much."

He had never touched the stuff himself, but soldiers carrying drugs, often meth, had been anything but unusual in the War when you had to hold out for days no matter what. After he had woken up, it had often been the little things that surprised him the most, like the 'war on drugs' when he'd known the more or less sanctioned use of drugs by soldiers in war.

Steve took the glass out of Tony's unresisting hand.

"Maybe it's time to let the past go; maybe that includes Dave. You can't help everyone. Can't help someone who doesn't see what you do."

Steve chugged the bourbon down. It burned him, too. Tony was jiggling his foot. Steve knew that motion; Tony didn't do still. If he was thinking about something real hard, he'd do that little jiggling motion, or tap out some rhythm on his thigh with his fingers, or on the reactor.

"You ready to sleep on it?" Steve asked after a while.

"Probably should."

"Yeah, you definitely should. Need help getting to bed?"

Tony rose onto reasonably steady feet and smirked at him.

"I dig blonds, but you don't have the right curves, Rogers."

Steve only laughed a little and put the two tumblers into the dishwasher as Tony went up the stairs to his penthouse suite.

* * *

 _An overdose of angst from me today._

 _Parallels to a certain actor can obviously be drawn, but that wasn't my inspiration: my impression of Tony Stark is that he was a wild child. Considering his alcohol intake and partying (as shown in Iron Man 1 and 2), I think it's quite likely that he came across drugs at one point and might have tried it. I think his character changed quite a lot post Afghanistan, and also after Iron Man 2, and that may have an effect on relationships with other people he has known for a while (of which we've only seen Pepper and Rhodey in MCU)._


End file.
